Despite Deadlock being one of the most popular games on Steam, Valve is yet to do a big reveal and hasn’t released so much as a trailer. But at The International Dota 2 tournament, a clip from Deadlock was shown during an analysis segment, which is the first time Deadlock gameplay has been shown off by Valve.
During the match between Xtreme Gaming and Tundra Esports at The International earlier today, analyst Kevin “Purge” Godec was breaking down some of the action in the game and snuck in a clip from Deadlock during his segment.
While speaking about a Shadow Fiend being killed from long range and thus losing all the souls he had collected, Purge and the production team sneaked in a clip of a Vindicta player in Deadlock securing a kill from long range, which releases souls to collect. Purge’s wording was very specific, and set up the Deadlock clip, showing that his was clearly intentional and not a production error as some Twitch chatters assumed.
With Valve not doing a full reveal for Deadlock just yet this is the first gameplay footage that has been shown on anything Valve has done. While the company is reportedly more hands off than previous years on The International this year, there is almost no way this clip would have been shown without someone at Valve giving the green light.
It’s not the only Deadlock related shenanigans at The International this year, with stage host / general nuisance Jake “SirActionSlacks” Kanner cosplaying as Deadlock hero Infernus for today’s broadcast.
Some fans are speculating that with the clip being shown and the cosplay from Slacks, as well as a few other sly references to Deadlock throughout the broadcast, there may be a formal reveal of Deadlock coming at some point during The International. It wouldn’t be the first time Valve has used the event to announce a new game, with Artifact also being revealed at The International a few years ago. However, the poor reaction to that may have scared Valve off from showing non-Dota related things at TI.
Even if we don’t get an official Deadlock reveal, the final day of The International is shaping up to be one of the greats. At the time of writing, four teams remain in the competition, and all four are easily capable of winning the whole thing. With all four teams primarily playing in Europe they all know each other extremely well and it will almost certainly come down to whoever shows up on the day.
